Boo On Low Iodine Diets

Part of the "wonderful" thing about having lived through thyroid cancer is that you have to do full body nuclear imaging every so often. I think I did my last one in 2005.

The imaging itself is all right. You really just lay there for a half hour or so and then you go home.

It's the prep that blows.

Back in the "dark ages" (read: 2002), they would make you go off your thyroid meds and wait for your levels to plummet naturally. This phenomenon takes time, because the half-life of the hormone is pretty long. While you're coming down, you have to maintain a low Iodine diet (I'll get to the list of prohibited foods shortly). The goal is to starve the body of Iodine, so that when they administer the radioactive Iodine isotope, the tissues suck it up really well. After the test is over, you take a different form of thyroid hormone to speed your levels back to normal. Still, it's a process that takes some time.

Nowadays they've devised a way to shorten this process, and get your hormone levels to come back much faster. But it's equally unpleasant--even more so, I suppose. Now they've invented a muscle injection that blocks your thyroid hormone even though you're still taking the meds. So the entire process only takes 1 week. The upside: this causes a quick plummet in levels and as soon as the last injection wears off, an equally quick return to normalcy. The downside: you have to get shots in your butt. Ow.

The first time I went through the process in 2002, I was off meds and on the diet for some 2 + weeks. Toward the end I got a little weird. I slept every opportunity I got (up to 12 hours/day). I was generally spaced out and couldn't focus on directions very well. I was cold all the time. I'll be honest with ya: it sucked trying to wrap up my last semester in college while this was going on.

And now for an abbreviated list of prohibited foods (at least nowadays they give you a cookbook to work with. How nice):

Fish/shellfish
Dairy
Anything containing red #3
Most commercial bread products
Soy
All condiments
Most pastas/cereals
Eggs
Chocolate
Potatoes

As last time, my diet will consist of 1 oz. chicken breast/ground beef/pork chop, a side of plain green vegetable (asparagus, broccoli, raw spinach), a side of fruit (apple, pear, cantaloupe, orange), water, and plain popcorn.

Mmm-mmm good.